Autonomy vs. Sovereignty

The aggressive transformation strategy of the Walldorf-based software company is currently forcing existing SAP customers into a debate over architectural and business direction, in which the much-touted cloud utopia reveals deep cracks upon closer inspection. When we analyze the operating models for ECC 6.0 and S/4, the public cloud favored by SAP turns out to be neither reasonable nor economical for the majority of my fellow regulars, and certainly not a guarantee of digital sovereignty.

A survey conducted by international user associations, led by the DSAG, shows that the public cloud remains a marginal phenomenon in the complex ERP landscape, accounting for only one to six percent of operations, while 78 percent of companies rely on hybrid on-premises and cloud environments. Outsourcing the business-critical core of a company to global hyperscalers based in the U.S. poses massive risks in terms of sovereignty, as legislation such as the U.S. Cloud Act can undermine European data protection regulations (GDPR). While the private cloud offers more architectural flexibility, operating it through SAP (Rise with SAP) still means being locked into a rigid subscription model, which is why traditional on-premises operation remains the strategic method of choice for over half of existing customers.

Fortunately, existing SAP customers are not defenseless against this cloud mandate, as there are highly powerful and robust alternatives that go beyond the strict SAP cloud doctrine. Instead of committing to a far-reaching vendor lock-in, savvy CIOs are turning to concepts like Composable ERP, where a stable on-premises core is flexibly orchestrated with best-of-breed solutions via independent integration platforms such as Boomi. On-premise cloud models such as HPE GreenLake offer another excellent alternative, enabling organizations to bring the elasticity, pay-as-you-go billing model, and the agility of the cloud directly into their own physically controlled data center, thereby preserving digital sovereignty without compromise and without having to forego modern cloud functionalities. For companies seeking to break free from the artificially created time pressure of the S/4 migration, third-party maintenance providers such as Rimini Street are positioning themselves as strategic enablers that cost-effectively extend the lifecycle of stable ECC 6.0 systems.

A central narrative of SAP’s marketing is that artificial intelligence and autonomous AI agents absolutely require SAP’s cloud computing—a claim that, upon closer examination, is exposed as crude sales misinformation. From a technical standpoint, artificial intelligence requires only structured data, computing power, and algorithms. Pioneers of agentic AI, such as Nova Intelligence, impressively demonstrate that autonomous AI agents can analyze historical SAP custom code and transform it into Clean-Coreby natively deciphering the semantics of the SAP architecture—completely independent of the commercial cloud requirements set by the Walldorf-based company.

However, SAP’s stance on AI and on-premise solutions in the recent past has amounted to outright blackmail of its own customers. In the summer of 2023, SAP CEO Christian Klein announced that revolutionary innovations such as the AI assistant Joule or the Green Ledger would be made available exclusively to customers with Rise or Grow Cloud contracts, effectively cutting loyal on-premise customers off from technological advancements. In an interview, SAP board member Thomas Saueressig even disparaged the attempt to integrate modern AI services with local on-premise systems as outdated „Frankenstein architecture.“ Only after massive protests and an unprecedented loss of trust did SAP partially backtrack, allowing isolated instances of AI usage for on-premise customers under strict contractual conditions—though the political pressure toward cloud migration remains undiminished. I’ll be discussing what changes Sapphire 2026 Orlando has brought in this regard with my SAP regulars at our summer party.

noname@e3mag.com